Sprinter or Marathoner: What kind of visual scriber are you?

Sprinter or Marathoner: What kind of visual scriber are you?

It is easier to explain it with a comparison.
Sprinters and marathoners are athletes. The first ones run 42 kilometers long and the second ones 100 meters long, but they could never switch competitions. They have completely different physical characteristics.

The marathoner has to be light because he must carry the weight of his own body for 42 km. On the other hand the sprinter has to be all muscles because he needs a good balance between arms and legs from the start and throughout all the race.

One is resistance, the other one is explosive power.

What has this to do with the different types of scribers? With Scribers, it happens more or less the same. It is very difficult for a person to be so good at drawing maps in two different fields such as graphic facilitation and graphic recording.

Sprinter: Graphic Facilitator
Graphic facilitator is a person who, in addition to know how to draw visual maps, he also leads meetings. It is not just a passive role to listen and draw what it is being said. The word “facilitator” also describes a role which includes much more than drawing: he makes questions, clarifies, and search consensus before capturing something on a map. The main characteristic of a scriber that makes graphic facilitation is that he has no idea what will emerge from a meeting so they can’t plan what to draw. That’s why they know how to interact with a group and have the capacity to think and draw very fast. The drawing style is simple because there is no time for details.

Marathoner: Graphic Recorder
Scribers that make graphic recording or video recording, visually map the speech of a person. They can plan the visual map because they have control over a key factor: time. They can seat at least 10 minutes with the speaker that they have to map and ask him about the speech. They can even agree on what are the key points that have to be drawn on the map. Planning allows more elaborate drawings because knowing in advance the content means less improvisation. These scribers have good storytelling skills because they map speeches, and speeches have a sequence structure (exposition, climax and resolution) that helps them to tell a story throw images.

The comparison between runners is exaggerated to better describe both types of scribers. Obviously those who work as graphic facilitator can do graphic recording and vice versa but knowing in which area you feel more comfortable, helps you create betters visual maps.

Apart from knowing on which activity to focus, the most important thing to bear in mind is: the only attribute that both types of scribers must develop in order to be the bests in each specialty is learn to listen.